When you think about TikTok, most of the time you think of addictive, short style videos. TikTok originated from Bytedance, a chinese company that bought a US app named Musical.ly for around 1 billion USDs in late 2017. The main intentions were to use the app and integrate it with the algorithms Bytedance had made for a social media platform like TikTok; however, the people of China never had access to TikTok and were forced to use a sister app named Douyin.

What is Douyin?

Unlike TikTok, Douyin is the sister app that is allowed to the public of China. Douyin and TikTok are very much the same app; both use the same short sharing style of video. However, when it comes to the functionality of the two apps, and what the two apps have to offer, there are many differences.

Lets go over some quick history

What makes Tiktok and Douyin so different?

According to Massachussett’s Institute of Technology’s technology review, kids who are under the age of 14 have restricted access to Douyin, limiting users in teenager mode to 40 minutes per day. In 2021, China made this rule mandatory for users under age 14.

Douyin also allows you to purchase products rights from the app itself, via live stream or any advertising video. In other words, you won’t have to exit the app to make purchases .

Another important factor of TikTok is the rankings and likelihood of videos that go viral. TikTok uses “video retention”, “likes”, “shares” and “follows” to recommend videos on the ¨for you¨ page. TikTok also recommends videos that the algorithm deems ¨for you¨ from the videos you personally like and keep watching.

On the flip side, Douyin promotes and gives traffic to verified enterprising accounts, as well as certain keywords in their algorithm, which ranks higher accounts with more followers instead of new accounts.

TikTok and Douyin also differ from content that is promoted by the two countries. In the United States, the viewers on TikTok prefer more entertaining content, like people making dance videos to popular songs. In China, Douyin purposely promotes educational videos more than entertainment, such as skills people have learned, to even broad content like sports and science. Douyin’s videos are more  of ¨a day in the life¨ style of video.

Conclusion

To a logical thinker, Douyin sounds like a controlled, yet convenient app. With restrictions against the younger audience and restrictions to what content gets promoted, this may be a deciding factor for most people but due to the ability to buy any product you see on the app without exiting the apps screen.

Douyin has many pros and cons; however, one thing that can be concluded about TikTok and Douyin is that the broad audience of both apps makes it very easy to establish a personal brand for yourself, especially when posting with the algorithm and finding the newest trends to do yourself. It’s no lie that both apps can be seen as great opportunities for any content creator.